I
While the King and the Prime Minister had thus been giving each other shocks of a somewhat unpleasant character, Prince Max had received a far pleasanter one. Only a week after the holding of the King's court the lady of his dreams had written asking for an interview.
The letter was not dated from the Archbishop's palace, but from the Home of the Little Lay-Sisters; and it was thither that he repaired, in order to forestall her humble yet amazing offer to wait upon him.
In the bare, conventual parlor, with high walls that echoed resoundingly and boards that smelt of soap, they met once more face to face and alone. She courtesied low, addressed him formally as "sir," and thanked him with due deference for coming; otherwise there was no change in her demeanor. The flat-frilled cap showed within its border a delicate ripple of hair, and above the fair breastplate of linen the face shone with tender warmth like a white rose resting upon snow; and as her lips moved in speech he re-encountered with a fervor of delight that curious quality of look which had ever haunted his dreams—a communicativeness not limited to words. Though it remained still her whole face spoke to him; lips and eyes made music together—a harmony of two senses in alliance, as into morning mist comes the yet unrisen light and the hidden singing of birds.
And yet all the while she was but saying quite ordinary things, making brief the embarrassment of this their first meeting since their relative positions had become explained.
"I have taken you at your word, sir," she began. "When we last met you asked if you could not be useful. Now you can."
"Your remembrance makes me grateful," said the Prince.
"Perhaps I ought not to be so confident," she went on, "since the idea is only my own. It came from something I heard my father saying; and as he strongly disapproves of women taking part in politics it was no use saying anything to him."
"Oh, politics?" That explanation rather surprised him.
"Sometimes—just now and then," explained Sister Jenifer, "politics do touch social needs: and to their detriment."
"My acquaintance with politics," answered the Prince, "is very—Chimerical," he added after a pause, pleased to have found the term.
"Yes," she smiled, "I have heard you. You are full of happy ideas, many of them somewhat contradictory; but you have not yet fallen into any groove. To you freedom means rebellion; you represent no vested interest."
"Is that my certificate of character?"
"I had not finished," she said. "I was keeping the best to the last. You have a great position and an open mind."
"An important combination, you think?"
"An unusual one."
"And so you have an unusual proposition to make to me?"
"Yes, I suppose you will think so. There is a brand I want plucked from the burning—a Royal Commission saved from becoming merely official and useless."
"What is its subject?"
"All this!"—she made an inclusive gesture—"slums, the conditions of sweated labor, the daily material which we have to work on."
"About which you have taught me that I know really nothing."
"You said you were anxious to learn. At least half of that Commission will be anxious not to learn—or not to let others."
"Then you ought to be on it."
"No woman is on it."
"You wish them to be?"
She threw out her hands. "What would be the use? Their voices would have no weight."
"Whose would?"
"Yours," she said; and, eyeing him full, stopped dead.
"You wish me to go upon that Commission?" cried Prince Max.
"Yes."
"In spite of all my ignorance?"
"The sittings do not begin till late autumn; between now and then you could get more actual knowledge—brought home and made visible to you, I mean—than most of those who will form its majority."
"Then you think I could be of use?"
She looked at him, silent for a moment. "I think you have a mind capable of taking fire, when it learns the facts."
"Facts only deaden some people," said he.
"Yes; that is what crushes us here. We have such mountains of facts to deal with."
"And you want fire to come down from those mountains and consume me?"
She nodded prophetically.
"I know you wouldn't run away."
"I am trying to feel the call," said Max a little skeptically. And in truth he was of divided mind, not because he had any doubt of his ability, but because the temptation to insincerity was so strong. This would give him the very opportunity he sought—through a vale of misery he beheld the way to his own Promised Land; but was it fair that he should take advantage of it without a heart of pity and conviction? This Prince of ours rather prided himself on his conscientious scruples.
"Will you tell me from the beginning," he said at last, "what put this thought into your mind? I seem to be getting it only by fragments."
"Three days ago," she answered, "I heard my father talking with others of the projected Commission. They were dissatisfied at the Church not being sufficiently represented—so insufficiently, indeed, that they took it as an intentional slight, part of the Government's policy for depriving the Bishops of all standing. It was held that further representation was imperative."
"What?" exclaimed Max; "am I to represent the Bishops, then?"
She shook her head, laughing. "Oh, no!" she answered. "They found some one very much better for themselves. That is the really immediate danger. They are afraid that the Commission as it stands will issue findings of a one-sided and party character, and that any minority report, unless it obtained the chairman's signature, would have no weight. Their main hope, therefore, is to secure a chairman of high standing on whose help they can rely, and it is thought that the Government could not oppose the nomination of a member of the Royal Family. It would appeal to popular sentiment; and subject to his Majesty's assent, his Royal Highness the Duke of Nostrum has expressed his willingness to serve."
Max had no great opinion of the collaterals of his grandfather—this one least of all. "Oh, ye Heavens!" he exclaimed. "For what use these bones of my ancestors? Why, with him to direct its deliberations, the Commission will run on into the next century, and its report be only applicable to the last!" Then, as he took stock of the situation, "And are you expecting me to head the minority report instead of him?" he inquired.
"It is not their report I am concerned about," she answered, "and for party I care little; it is the majority I fear. On paper the Commission looks as if it meant business; Church and property have been squeezed into one small corner, but the trade-interest is very strong; it is there in concealed ways which outsiders cannot recognize, for even over our public and medical departments—and still more in the press—it has now got control. I can give you instance after instance of men known as philanthropists whose riches come from sweated labor, and whose munificent charities form not one tithe of their inhuman profits drained from the lives of the very poorest. Some of them, great advertisers, are to sit on this Commission, and all the press, irrespective of party, will praise their appointment; while to defend their interests others will be attacked. The Government may be quite ready as a temporary expedient to make scapegoats of the property-owners, but it is not so ready to antagonize trade. I believe, sir, that on this Commission the real source of evil will never be traced; we shall hear of the grinding middleman and the rack-renter, but nothing dangerous to these magnates, or to the trade-system itself—unless——" She paused, and left silence to carry her message.
"Unless," supplemented Max, "some one thoroughly indiscreet occupies the chair?"
"Somebody," she replied, "whose minority report of one would attract all the attention it deserved."
"Oh, you think——?" His mind sparkled at the prospect: to be in a minority of one had a peculiar fascination for him.
"Yes, I think it may come to that," she said, "if you will honestly open your eyes."
"Then you cannot promise me the support of the Church?"
She shook her head as though that were the last thing possible.
"I am to be all alone?" His tone invited commiseration, while his brain soared with the dreams of a hashish-eater.
"I think about three may be with you, not more," she said, letting him down to earth again.
"Why are you so confident about me?"
Her gentle gray eyes met his with friendly understanding.
"When I found out who you were," she said, "I saw"—then she hesitated—"I saw that you had the rare gift of doing naturally what one would never expect."
"In what way?"
"To begin with, in coming here at all. And then you did things which, I imagine, no prince ever did before, and did them quite easily—'for fun,' I suppose you would say. Well, if you could do all that for fun, what might you not do when you became serious? A man who doesn't mind being laughed at—whatever his position—is very rare."
"Ah!" cried Max, "but now you are giving me more credit than I deserve. You set me to do ridiculous things for you—ridiculous, I mean, in one dressed as I was for fashion and not for use—I was aware of it; but nobody was aware of me. When I come here into these poor streets, I am so unexpected that nobody recognizes me. If they thought that they did, they would not believe their eyes. In that alone there is a sense of enlargement and liberty which those who have not to live in our position can hardly realize. It was like holiday; I felt as though I had been let loose."
"And so became more yourself?"
"I cannot say; but I was happy while I was here. Why did you send me away?"
"For the same reason that I now ask you to come back. I wanted you to be of use—independently."
"Yet here I am dependent upon you again."
"No; you have this in your own hands: it is your position."
"That secures the chairmanship? But am I at all likely to be accepted?"
"From what I hear, nobody suspects you of taking any great interest in the life of the poor. They have therefore no reason to be afraid of you."
"I see," said Max. "As a figure-head chairman I might even be valuable."
"Very, I have no doubt."
"Part of the game?"
"Royalty and Trade are supposed to be natural allies," remarked Sister Jenifer.
Max was startled at her discernment. "Oh, but that is true!" he cried. "How wonderful, then, that you should be able to trust me at all."
This set her smiling. "I had the advantage to begin with of not knowing who you were."
"And that gave you a start."
"No, finding you out gave me the start."
"You certainly have not lost time."
"That I cannot say, till I have your answer." There was no temporizing here.
Max thought for a while, then drew breath and spoke. "I want you quite to understand," he said, "that if I take up this work it will be very largely for a personal reason. I daresay I shall, as you say, 'take fire' when I know more about it; but at present I am not so moved. Commissions do not attract me; and what I undertake I shall do solely on faith—faith in you. Are you content that it should be so?"
"For a beginning, yes."
"Very well; something else follows. I shall need you for my guide."
"I am always here at certain hours," she said. "But there are others who know far more than I."
He let that point go unregarded.
"Then I may come to you for help?"
"Always, if really you need it."
"My needs shall be as real as I can make them," said Max. "How am I to begin?"
She named one or two books. "If you follow up what you read there," she said, "you will find most of it practically demonstrated in this district alone. For instance, we have a strike on just now among our tailors and shirt-makers; the men have made the women come out with them; they did not want to—women can exist under conditions where men cannot. Go and mix with them, be among them for hours, attend their street-corner meetings; you will hardly hear two ideas of any practical value, but you will get many. It isn't theory that is wanted,—it is that the life which thousands are living should be known and realized. When the eye has seen, the heart follows. All we really want is brotherhood; but how are we to bring it about?"
"From that I am furthest away of all," said Prince Max.
"No, no," she cried; "that is the great mistake! If kings are not the very symbol of our community then they have no value left. May I tell you two of the most kingly things I ever heard done in the present day? The one was by the old King of Montenegro, the smallest of the Balkan States. He found that his chief gentry were becoming lazy, too proud to put their hands to labor—making idleness a class distinction. He sat down in the courtyard of his palace and began to make shoes, and went on making them daily while he held his Court and administered justice; and so the new folly died."
"And the other?" inquired the Prince.
"It may seem far-fetched in the present connection," said she, "yet as an expression of the real kingly instinct it has all that I mean. Some years ago the heir to the English throne—the one who died young—went out to India. One day he was holding a durbar of Indian chiefs, and they with their retinues stood drawn up in parade ready to offer homage as he passed along their ranks. Opposite was a great crowd of natives watching the spectacle, and at a certain point in that crowd stood, as a mere onlooker, one whom Britain had defeated and driven into exile, the old Ameer of Afghanistan. Just before he rode down the Prince heard of it, and had the man pointed out to him; and when he came there he wheeled his horse about and gave the full royal salute. And through all that great multitude went a thrill because the kingly thing had been done, and all had seen it."
Tears glistened in her eyes as she spoke. "He was rather a dull young man," she went on, "so one has been told, but that was better than brains, for that was the touch of human kindness done in the grand manner which royalty makes possible, and ought to make natural—done with a pride which has its place beside the humility of St. Francis."
"Well, well," said Max, "put me in touch then, and I will see what I can do. But I haven't the grand manner, you know."